Motion Picture Directing: The Facts and Theories of the Newest Art

by Peter Milne

It has been shown that D. W. Griffith and a number of his lesser disciples decline to use a continuity on the ground that it cramps their originality. They can't make a good picture following another man's continuity. What better answer could be found than that in answer of the question, “Who is the creator of a picture?”

Both the De Milles are frank with the statement that they work long and arduously over the preparation of their continuities. Then there is Thomas H. Ince's method which, as explained, stresses the importance of the continuity above all else. It appears to be plain, therefore, that the continuity is generally regarded as the beginning of everything with respect to the motion picture. Of course, the original story comes first of all and is vastly the most important matter for consideration. But the original, as a general rule, is not a picture story. From the original story the continuity writer creates the picture.

The continuity writer thinks in pictures. If he is efficient he is able to visualize his work as he goes along. When he has finished his task he has a completed picture in his mind. And if his continuity is a perfect work he has a completed picture on paper. And, still further, if the director is capable of visualizing, he discerns this completed picture that lies before him on paper and proceeds to transfer it to the celluloid.

The man who carries out the plans for the construction of a giant building or of a subway, the man who does the actual building of a great ship or the man who directs a picture, are not the creators of their work. The creators are the men who draw up the plans.

The reason why directors claim that they can't get the best results working with another man's continuity is that they realize that directing has its limitations. To actually create they must invade the field of creation. And so the Griffiths and the De Milles invade the continuity writers' field and do creating on their own accounts. And some of them, of course, are creators of excellence.

Then, these matters granted, why bother about the continuity writer, it may be asked. Without going to the defense of these greatly abused fellows it may be emphatically stated that without the continuity writer the directors would find their work greatly deteriorating. In the field of production today there are certain directors who insist on doing their own continuities, who refuse even the slightest assistance or suggestion from an outside source. Many of these men grow “stale” in their work and turn out uninspired and mechanical pictures. They “live” with a picture too long. They get to know it so well that they slight it. They know it so well that they think everyone else is on the same familiar footing with it. They see it through their own eyes only and they see it through colored glasses that obligingly obliterate all its faults and intensify its merits. These men won't let anyone touch one of their pictures in any process of production. They even insist on doing the actual cutting and editing of the film and the writing of the subtitles. Their work is, as a rule, artless, tedious to watch and flat in the majority of effects striven for.

This condemnation of the man who combines both the arts of writing for the screen and directing is not to be taken without exception. The rule is like every other rule and wouldn't be a rule unless there were here and there an exception to it.

So, instead of a creator the motion picture director really finds himself in the same position occupied by the man who sets out to translate a book from one language into another. The work has already been created and lies before him needing only his deft touch to recreate it through a different medium than type. Recreate seems to be the proper word. Deprived of the privilege of calling himself a creator, a director can at last call himself a recreator.

And when a director proceeds to translate a work of his own from type to picture form he is filling both positions. However, the fact that he is creating in one of his capacities, doesn't mean that he is creating in the other as well.

This sudden depriving of the director of all award in the creation of a motion picture and handing it to the screen writer may not seem at all just. There are directors who will say that such a claim is ridiculous, who will say that a continuity writer cannot possibly be the creator of a picture because he doesn't know the exact topography of the exterior location or setting to be used as background for the scene, who will say that there are hundreds of times when little pieces of “business” suggest themselves on the moment to the director.